CHAPTER 35
Sinclair
Three months later
I WATCH OUT THE window of the car as the sun sets over the Chicago. The sky is painted in hues of purple and orange and blue.
“Are you ready?” Dex turns to me.
“I’m as ready as I’m going to be, I guess.”
He turns off the engine and walks around to open my door. Putting his out his elbow, I take it and we walk toward the church.
“I forgot to tell you, I had the strangest dream last night.”
“What was that?”
“I dreamed we were getting married today,” I laugh, shaking my head. “Weird, huh?”
“Yeah,” he chuckles. “That’s pretty crazy, Clair.”
I shrug. “What can I say? I have quite a wild imagination, apparently.”
“Apparently so.” He pushes his glasses up on his nose and grins at me as he opens the door. “Deep breath. Here we go.”
We step inside the chapel and the place is milling with people, all smiling and laughing.
“I think you better get to work,” Dex winks as he squeezes my hand before he lets it drop.
I walk along the hall to the back of the building and pass Mom in the corridor. I hug her and she starts to speak, then shakes her head no, waving a handkerchief and pursing her lips as if she can will the tears away. At the end of the hall, I tap lightly on the ancient wooden door.
“Sinclair, that had better be you!” My sister calls from the other side.
One might think that, having been through what she has, Kelly would be so grateful this day had finally come that she’d be a kinder, gentler version of herself. Instead, she has turned into a fair-skinned, golden-haired, petite little bridezilla.
“I’m here, I’m here!” I step inside.
“Oh, thank god!” She exclaims as the hairdresser places the last tendrils up in the flower wreath on top of her head.
“Kelly! You look…absolutely stunning.” Seeing my little sister, so grown up, looking so beautiful nearly takes my breath away.
“You really think so?” Her eyes brim with emotion as she turns to look at me.
I can see, now, how much the nerves have taken over and become the source of all her mania.
“Logan is going to think so, too. You’re his whole world, you know.” I smile, placing a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m so glad you’re here.” She squeezes my hand.
“You ready to be an old married lady?” I chuckle.
“So ready,” she stands and hugs me.
We step out into the hall and Daddy is there waiting for us.
“Wow. I’ve never seen so much beauty,” he kisses me, hard on the side of the temple and does the same to Kelly.
“Are you ready to give your baby girl away?” She asks, her eyes dampening.
“Never. I’m never giving either of you away, but I suppose I’m okay with walking you in there to get married to a pretty decent guy.” He narrows his eyes at me. “I’d like to do that once in my lifetime at least.” I shrug sheepishly, and he winks. “Okay. Let’s go.” He puts out his elbow and she takes it.
Before long, the crowd are on their feet, cheering, as the officiant introduces Dr. and Mrs. Logan Ellison.
Dex finds me and we walk across the grounds to the reception pavilion.
“You okay, big sis?” He squeezes the hand I have tucked into his elbow.
“Better when we can leave here and get tacos.” I grin.
“One track mind.” He shakes his head.
Inside the pavilion, people mill around, congratulating the happy couple. When people move to the dance floor, Dad finds me and pulls me to the floor.
“You okay, kitten?”
“I’m so good, Daddy,” I reply as he spins me around the floor.
“You don’t wish that had been you today?” He cocks up an eyebrow.
“No way. Things worked out just the way they were meant to. You know this type of thing was never a big deal to me.”
“As long as you’re happy.”
“Mind if I cut in?” Dex looks from Dad to me and back.
“Well, I feel like I can hardly say no,” Daddy says with a chuckle, slapping Dex on the shoulder as he takes me in his arms.
“So,” he turns me around the dance floor.
“So,” I reply, smirking.
“You don’t feel like you missed out? Because if this is what you want…,” he looks around at the massive crowd of guests.
“No way. This is so not me. This was never my kind of thing.”
“So, you don’t regret eloping?”
I look down at my left hand as it rests on his shoulder. The simple gold band and brilliant diamond sparkle in the light of the early evening sun.
“Never,” I move my hand to his cheek as I pull him closer. “Do you regret marrying me?
“Christ, Clair. Are you crazy? I’d have married you when we were still in school if you’d have had me. I’d marry you all over again if you wanted a big wedding now, too.” He presses his lips to my forehead as he holds me close.
“You’re happy, though?” He asks, and when he looks at me over his glasses, one brow cocked up, the look reminds me of the gangly boy I first fell for all those years ago.
“Happy?” I chuckle. “There are not enough words to describe how much.”
EPILOGUE
Dexter
I’M STANDING BEHIND THE desk at the front of the classroom, flipping through the textbook. There are calendars and lesson plans strewn across the desktop. The wall behind me holds a state-of-the-art whiteboard, and on each desk sits a tablet containing a library of textbooks. The state-of-the-art space is a far cry from the first classroom I taught in.
Clair walks in and leans against the doorframe, looking around the room.
“How did I ever concentrate on class when you were my professor?” She crosses her arms.
I close the book and smirk. “You? What about me? How hard do you think it was to keep my place giving lectures with the sexiest girl on the planet in my class?”
She steps forward and grasps the edge of the desk as she slides back to sit on top of it. Her legs hang loose, and she kicks off one heel, letting it dangle from her toe.
“I can’t believe it’s really happening.” She shakes her head as she looks around the room.
She picks up the pen with the Increasingly Thrive Foundation logo on it and turns it over in her fingers.
“It’s happening. You have twenty-six students starting tomorrow. You’re going to change their lives, Sinclair. You’re going to be great.” I stand in front of her and look down at the pen in her hands.
“You still haven’t figured it out, I’m guessing?” I narrow my eyes and grin at her.
“Figured what out?” Her brows furrow.
“The name. Increasingly Thrive.” I cock up an eyebrow and smirk, proud that there are still some surprises my incredible wife hasn’t figured out yet.
“Wait…,” she looks down at the name again and a smile creeps across her sweet lips. “Sinclair…everything?” Her smile is full-fledged, now. She puts the pen down and puts her palm up to my cheek.
“You got me,” I lean forward and put my palms on the desk outside her knees.
“There’s one more you missed, too. Our company?”
She looks skyward, sucking her lower lip against her teeth, then her eyes widen, her mouth parting into a circle.
“No! That was so long ago! The anagram for Alder Extrinsic is Dexter Sinclair?”
“I told you…loved you forever.” I lean forward and deposit a kiss on the tip of her nose.
“How did I ever get lucky enough to find you?”
“You signed up for the right class,” I press a kiss to the corner of her mouth.
I slide my hands up under the hem of her skirt as I kiss her cheek, her jaw, her neck.
“What do you think you’re doing?” She giggles, sliding her fingers through my hair at the nap
e of my neck as she tips her head back, granting me access to her neck.
“Well, while it’s just the two of us here, I thought I could fulfill one of those fantasies I had about you back in college. Laying you back on this desk and making you scream my name seems like a pretty good way to start the evening.” I nibble on her earlobe and she scratches her nails down my back.
“This is it, you know. My dreams have all come true. You made that happen.” She says softly.
“You’re my dream, Clair. Like I told you that day on the beach in Mexico when we said our vows…I’ll spend my whole life making sure you’re happy, safe, and loved.”
She pushes me down onto the desk and straddles my lap. Her palms brush my jaw and she kisses me softly.
“Love you, Dex,” she whispers.
“Love you back. Always have, always will.”
I slide my hands around her hips and pull her closer. “Please tell me we’re going to have sex in your classroom now,” I quirk my lips to the side as I wriggle my eyebrows.
She throws her head back and a big, full laugh rolls through her in the way that makes my heart soar.
“There should be a word, you know.” She smirks as she presses her body against mine.
“A word for having sex in your classroom? How about…educoitus?” I offer and she giggles.
“No, for being this completely, overwhelmingly, insanely happy,” she brushes kisses against my jaw. “For feeling this complete.”
“Oh,” I reply as I slide my hands down her body, across her hips and down her thighs. “Well, there is, I think, and it’s a short one.”
She pauses to cock up an eyebrow in question.
I smile back at her and dip my head, satisfying her suspense before my lips meet hers. “Us.”
A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR
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Preview: The Dating Alternative
Copyright © 2018 Jennifer Woodhull
All Rights Reserved
CHAPTER 1
Brie
IT’S A WEEKNIGHT AND I am home mercifully early from my job as a coal miner. Okay, not technically a coal miner. A first-tier accountant. It’s the most entry level of positions. I am a commoner. A pleb. The lowest of the low.
However, I’m the lowest of the low at the best accounting firm in town. I went to work for Latham and Steele three years ago. It was only my second professional job. Teague, Sampson, and Bray had hired me right out of college. I worked there for four years, working my way up to an accountant slot. When a recruiter with Latham and Steele reached out, I was thrilled for the opportunity.
We were in the middle of a huge merger which was taking its toll on everyone from both a workload and cultural standpoint. So, when the recruiter called offering better pay and benefits, I started packing my desk before we even hung up the phone. Had I known I’d end up—three years later—still in an entry-level role and working for Jacqueline, a boss so bad that she makes Cruella Deville look like a kinder, gentler version of Mother Theresa by comparison, I’d have taken a beat before leaving TSB for two extra points of 401k match and an extra three sick days per year.
On this particular evening, though, guess how many fucks I give about Jacqueline the jackass and her derisive comments? Zero. Instead, I am blasting nineties rock through my earbuds, and dancing around the house in my Hoosiers sweatshirt as I tidy up. Chelsea, the missing musketeer in my little gang of three, has been out of town for weeks, and she’s coming back on Friday. When we get together, we are going to drink copious amounts of liquor while she regales us with tales of her conquests in foreign lands. Considering my own nonexistent sex life, I am unashamed to be living vicariously through her and Cate, the two best friends I’ve ever had.
I sashay into my bedroom and pull open the top drawer of the dresser with one hand, holding the laundry basket against my hip with the other. Dipping a hand into the basket, I grab a stack of beige and white cotton panties and place them in the drawer. The drawer is only half-full. The good lingerie, those colorful pieces a woman keeps in her wardrobe for date nights and special occasions, have long since been discarded. They were tainted. Damaged goods. They had to go.
As I put away a stack of the sensible flesh-colored t-shirt bras I’ve accumulated over the past several months, from the back of the second drawer, a dash of color catches my eye. I set the basket down, and stare at the piece of fabric.
It’s a t-shirt. A simple t-shirt, but at the same time, a complex object. A reminder of crispy bacon on lazy Sunday mornings, and two-for-one margaritas on Thursday nights; of singing along at the top of our lungs to the radio, and nights spent wrapped in each other’s arms.
I don’t want to pick it up, but I can’t stop myself. Before I know it, I have the soft piece of bright blue cotton in my hands. I pull off my sweatshirt and slip the t-shirt over my head. Looking in the mirror, the garment is three sizes too big as it hangs from my narrow frame. PUNTA CANA, is emblazoned across the front. I trace the crackled white ink with my fingers. Fuck, that feels like a lifetime ago.
Walking over to the bed, I lay down. The mattress is only a few months old, but the bed itself is the same one I shared with my fiancé.
It’s clear that it has been washed, this discarded relic of Grant’s life with me, but it still smells like him. Closing my eyes, the trip to the island comes back in vivid detail. The heat of the sun bouncing off the powdery white sand, the thrill of seeing dolphins leaping from the water in the distance and nights spent in each other’s arms, looking up at the stars.
Grant had surprised me by proposing on the second night of the trip as we walked along the beach after dinner. He asked me to be his and promised me forever. I said yes, and we were happy. That was before he met her.
On one of the nights when I had been working late, or maybe I had been studying for my CPA exams, he went out with his usual motley crew of beer-drinking buddies to their favorite local bar to watch basketball. It was probably a night like any other night. Isn’t that the way sometimes, though? Big changes sometimes come on a whisper, instead of a scream.
Through the lens of hindsight, I realized that it was after that night out with the boys that things had begun to change. It was subtle at first. He wasn’t as disappointed when I couldn’t make it to Margarita Thursday because we were too busy at the office. He started running again, saying he wanted to get in better shape for the wedding.
Worst of all, though, he seemed, suddenly and without any explanation, somehow happier. I vainly thought it was because of our upcoming wedding. I told myself he was just happy for us to begin our married life together. I was so wrong.
I blindly continued with our wedding plans, hiring caterers and putting deposits on venues. He was working longer hours than usual, but with a job in sales, I assumed he was just hustling. Trying to earn more to help pay for the upcoming expenses.
Eventually, everything had come together, and we were just three weeks away from the big day. I would be Mrs. Grant Nolan. It felt like everything was clicking into place—it was the inevitable happily ever after, and it was going to come true. I was so focused on the last-minute wedding details, and studying for my upcoming exams, I didn’t see it. I didn’t see any of it coming.
It was a Wednesday night, when Grant came home from the office a little later than expected.
“Hi,” I said. “So, should I do those steaks for dinner?” I aske
d, glancing up from the scattering of study materials and laptop on the dining table as he walked in.
“No…yes…I don’t care. I won’t be here.” He said, matter-of-factly. He seemed agitated, almost manic with energy.
“Oh? Do you have to go back to the office?” I asked, taking my glasses off and focusing my attention on my fiancé, who stood before me nearly bouncing off the walls.
“No, no. I, um, I’m leaving.” He nodded once and headed for the bedroom.
“What do you mean, you’re…,” I followed him, asking the question, and as I turned the corner into the bedroom, I saw that he had the suitcase, the big blue one, on the bed. He was pulling stacks of clothes out of the closet and throwing them into it.
“Grant?” His name was a question, to which he didn’t respond. “Grant! What the hell? What’s going on?” I raised my voice to near a yell.
“Hmm? Oh. I’m leaving. We’re done. I’m moving out. Tonight. I’ll get what I can and be back for the rest in a few days.” He nodded again and put his hands briefly on his hips as if he were considering the contents of his suitcase. Then, he went to the dresser and pulled out socks, t-shirts, and underwear, shoving them on top of the dress clothes and jeans that were already packed.
“Wait, what? What do you mean you’re leaving? Where are you going?” I couldn’t process any of it. I am a logical person, and what was happening at that moment simply did not compute.
“Oh,” he stopped briefly, as if it had suddenly occurred to him that an explanation of some kind might be in order. “I’ve met someone, Brie. I’m moving out.”
I looked at him, certain I hadn’t heard him right. He looked back at me, and he was grinning. The bastard was packing his shit, three weeks before our wedding day, leaving me, and he was actually grinning.
“What the hell, Grant? How can you have met someone? You’re engaged…to me!” I crossed my arms and shook my head; certain this was all some stupid prank his idiot friends had put him up to.
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